


As much trouble as they're worth

by LeDiz



Series: The 48: Ratchet & Clank [3]
Category: Ratchet & Clank
Genre: F/M, Romance, figuring out girls, joys of being the last male lombax, or rather, ratchet is a culturally late bloomer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 03:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8234833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeDiz/pseuds/LeDiz
Summary: At fifteen, Ratchet wasn't brilliant at girls. But he eventually worked them out.





	

Even at fifteen, Ratchet wasn’t… brilliant at girls.

Well, honestly, he wasn’t brilliant at much. Except mechanics, but even then, most things he built took a couple of tries to get right and occasionally caused physics actual pain… But he was a good flier! Mostly. Usually had to buff out the dings and stuff, and he’d gotten arrested a few times for reckless endangerment with a vehicle, and… um…

Anyway.

Girls. He didn’t really get them. When kids he’d grown up with were starting to drool over girls, he’d mostly been confused. At the time, he’d put it down to being a lombax around non-lombaxes. There were loads of people that weren’t attracted to anyone outside their own species. And honestly, that was a thing – he didn’t understand how he could be attractive to anyone, because… _fur_. And most people he grew up around had flatter faces – they certainly didn’t have muzzles. He’d spent several very confused nights trying to figure out how he was supposed to kiss anyone properly. Like they did on the holo-films. With tongue and stuff. His mouth wasn’t built that way. So _how_?

And then he met Angela.

Granted, to start with, he’d been a little too distracted to think of her as anything but ‘that crazy thief bitch’. Then she’d become ‘that clumsy smart girl’. Then they’d kind of been trying to stop Qwark and… well.

When he tried to sleep, however… maybe he’d had… thoughts.

But they hadn’t been… when he was a lot older and more in touch with how these things worked, he figured out that they were the natural thought of a kid just beginning to develop hormones and recognising that this was a body that matched his. He hadn’t quite realised she was a lombax until pretty late in the game, but he’d seen striped yellow fur, and a thin waist, and big eyes, big ears, and made a subconscious ‘insert  part A into slot B’ connection.

Uh, figuratively speaking.

He hadn’t actually been attracted to her, though. Just… aware of her. It had taken a lot more years before he realised it was because she was a lot older than him and that was fairly normal.

They had talked, though. When he’d first asked the awkward question.

“So um… are you… are you really a lombax?”

Angela stared at him for a few seconds before realisation seemed to hit her. “You’ve never met another lombax before. Of course not, you’re…! Oh, I should have realised,” she said, and then smiled. “Yeah, I am. One of the few that left the colonies.”

He fidgeted, very glad Clank was off chatting with the communications mainframe. “Uh… sorry if this is a personal question, but… what happened to your tail?”

“I never had one,” she said. “Women don’t. Just guys.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I always figured it was a balance thing,” she said with a grin he didn’t quite understand. “Between one side and the other.”

_That_ he could get, and let out a startled laugh. She grinned wider.

“Women get longer hair,” she said, flicking at her ponytail. “And we’re thinner. Adult guys are built like tanks in the shoulder department. Look forward to _those_ growing pain.”

“Adult guys…?” he asked, amused. “You saying something about my height?”

Her grin faded as she looked at him properly again. After a few increasingly awkward seconds, she left the computer she was typing at to come and sit on the chair beside him, her eyes searching his face for something he wasn’t sure was there.

“What do you do when you get sick?” she asked.

“Get sick?” he asked, surprised by the change in topic. “I… don’t. Usually. Why?”

“Curious. What do you eat?”

He balked, not understanding the shift. “Uh… food? I don’t know… barbeque toad’s big on Veldin, and I can make a pretty mean fried root stick.”

She put a hand to her mouth, and he wasn’t really sure how to react. She looked almost… upset. “You’re what… fifteen? Sixteen?”

He shrugged and nodded. “About that. Why?”

“You’re kinda small for your age,” she said. “I’m thirty-five. I left my home galaxy the _second_ I was considered old enough, and… never got a chance to go home again. It just hit me that you never would have even had that.”

He shifted awkwardly, ears quivering as he fought to keep them pointed upward. “I guess.”

“You know,” she said suddenly, tone changing as she hunched forward. “Back on Fastoon, you would’ve been quite the heart throb.”

He stalled, eyes widening. “Wh- what?”

“Totally! You’ve got that whole pretty thing going on with your face,” she said, gesturing to her own muzzle. “Most guys had more of a flat face, and super heavy brows. Forward muzzles in guys are rare and considered very attractive. And those eyes? You’d be model material, no question.”

Ratchet flushed, one hand rising to curve down over his ear. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Add on the whole super hero thing and you’d be beating off girls with a stick. Most kids your age are still trying to figure out calculus,” she said, and he raised his eyebrows.

“Kids?”

“Yeah, Ratchet,” she said, and took a deep breath. “Kids. You’re a kid. Barely high school aged. And saving the galaxy pretty much single handedly.”

He grinned, rolling his shoulders back in pride, and she managed an awkward smile in return before abruptly shoving herself up and going back to the computer.

It literally took until almost a decade later, when Talwyn brought him a beer on his birthday and congratulated him on finally becoming an adult, that he realised Angela had been upset by the realisation, and why.

 

* * *

 

Honest to whatever powers there were, Ratchet would be lying if he didn’t take one look at Sasha and immediately decide she was the hottest thing he’d ever seen.

His hormones had definitely started kicking in that year, as well as his imagination. The good (and painful) thing about moving galaxies and becoming better known as an actor (and therefore Clank’s chauffeur) than a galactic superhero is that very few organic females wanted to throw themselves in the path of his suddenly increased libido. Robots, sure, but they were just trying to get to Clank and didn’t do a whole lot for him. Except maybe Courtney Gears, but she was definitely not built for _robot_ eyes, so he felt he could get away with that. So he didn’t do anything he would come to regret by cashing in on the whole galactic superhero thing for some tail.

But then Sasha came along, who seemed to be around his age, just as furry as him, with a matching muzzle, a tail, a great butt (seriously. He was a big fan of hips and everything around them, he’d realised), and when they weren’t focussed on saving the galaxy, she seemed to like him back.

It turned out he wasn’t half bad at flirting, either. At least, when she giggled at him, it was because he wanted her to. And after the galaxy was saved, and they sat together at Clank’s latest premiere, she reached out and held his hand.

He would have been on cloud nine just from that, but then she kissed his cheek at the end, and he probably could have died happy right then and there.

She became his first girlfriend.

He wasn’t her first boyfriend. He found out a lot later that lombaxes grew slower than cazars, so although they were fairly close in age (she was a couple of years older), she was far more experienced than him. But she didn’t mind. She was happy to take it slow – slower than he would have liked, honestly, but he appreciated it in hindsight.

She taught him how felids showed affection – he’d been absolutely right when he’d guessed that his mouth wasn’t made for the kind of kissing other bipeds did. And his fantasies about using hands, claws, and teeth more than the holo-films implied turned out to be natural instincts, not just him being weird.

There were a few things that didn’t match up. Ways her body responded that his didn’t. But they mostly fit together, in more ways than one.

“Figuratively and literally,” he joked one night, when they were lying back and watching a holo-vid. She elbowed him hard enough to hurt but laughed all the same.

But they did. It wasn’t just the physical, they were great friends as well as lovers. He made her laugh, she made him feel safe. They were together for almost a year, and he could admit to himself that he loved her. But…

Life. Life just got in the way.

She wanted to settle down, start a political career, a family. And Ratchet just wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t done exploring. He wanted adventures. The only things he felt like he was good for was fixing spaceships and saving galaxies. And spaceships didn’t carry quite the same thrill as risking your neck going up against an army of psycho killing machines.

“I’m always going to love you,” Sasha said gently, brushing her fingers along the tips of his ears, “but I think this is as far as we go, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he whispered back. “Yeah, I think so.”

Felids didn’t kiss like other bipeds, but she pressed her lips against his temple, between the corner of his eye and start of his ear, a spot normally covered by his cap that could undo him in an instant. He scratched his hands down her side in response, fingers scraping from the bottom of her shoulderblade to her hip. She hummed, pressing tighter against him before pulling away.

“Take care of yourself, Ratchet. I trust Clank to keep you safe, but don’t let anyone break your heart.”

That was how they broke up. She gave him her ship, and he carried a torch for her right up until he got kidnapped into Dreadzone. Fighting every day to stay alive while listening to people slander you from every angle and have to kill people you’d looked up to and spending every waking second trying to figure out how to escape and…

After that, Ratchet hadn’t really been able to do the whole intimacy thing.

Sasha understood.

 

* * *

 

Talwyn was…

When he met her, it had been a long time since Ratchet had really thought about girls that way. He’d mostly recovered from Dreadzone, and didn’t have so many nightmares, but he still wasn’t ready to get back in the game, to put a phrase on it. He knew he wasn’t as playful as he’d once been, but part of that was growing up and part of it was just… recovery. He’d come to terms with a lot of stuff, and grown kind of… used to being a hero. That was his life. He had a friend in Clank, and a… whatever Qwark was in him. Girls were… well, honestly, girls were something he had time for only when his body really, really needed the release. It never lasted more than a few hours and everyone was generally okay with that.

So when Talwyn showed up, she initially didn’t even register with his hormones. He was a little distracted anyway. If they flirted, he didn’t really notice – that was kind of how banter flowed sometimes in the hero world.

He was a little… intrigued by her knowledge of lombaxes though. It annoyed him that she knew more about his people than he did, but it fascinated him too. He wanted to ask her stuff, but she could be so patronising about it that he mostly kept quiet.

And then Clank was taken, and he just didn’t give a damn about anything.

“You guys have been friends for a long time, huh?” she asked quietly, when it was late, he was tired, and the whole universe just _sucked_.

“My first and only,” he said softly. “I need him back, Talwyn.”

She nodded, watching him with careful eyes. “You know it’s funny. I never really understood a lot of what my dad used to say about lombaxes. He used to say that you guys always seemed really antisocial, but formed really strong bonds with small groups of people. The family you chose, I guess. I didn’t really understand it, but you and Clank, you are family. I get it now.”

“Yeah, well…” He took a breath and sat back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “He stuck by me through a lot of crazy stuff.”

“Yeah. Sorry, it’s just… interesting,” she said. “All that stuff my dad told me. He was obsessed with the lombaxes. Their history, their culture… but it was all academic. I don’t know if he met many of you. I certainly hadn’t, before you. He had all these theories that he taught me – these concepts. And here you are, and and you’re so much more.”

Ratchet rolled his head around to look at her, not sure where she was going with all this. “No offence, but I don’t care. I’m not some… specimen to fit history books, okay? I just –”

She put her hand on his knee and he stalled. Judging by her kind smile, that seemed to have been her intention – just trying to get him to calm down and stop before he started ranting.

It was strange though. It didn’t feel like a tactic. It had been, but not like the way he planned battles or arguments. It just felt… nice.

“Dad said the lombaxes were heroic,” she continued quietly. “They fought great wars, and saved the whole universe without ever getting anyone else involved. When I first heard about you, I thought, you know… typical lombax. Always trying to save the day. But that’s not you, is it? You’re not typical. You’re just a good guy.”

He quirked a smile. “Didn’t used to be. You should’ve seen me back when I first met Clank. He made me a better guy.”

“No,” she said softly. “I think he just made you realise you didn’t have to be a jerk to get by. That you didn’t have to be alone.”

He couldn’t keep his smile up at that. He couldn’t even hold her gaze anymore. He turned back to the ceiling, because that felt safer. Safer than her eyes, which were so big and kind and understanding. Safer than that hand on his leg, which was warm and gentle. Safer than the whole of her which was there and good and he was such a selfish jerk because Clank was out there alone and lost somewhere and here he was suddenly _wanting_ and…

“You still don’t have to be alone, Ratchet,” Talwyn whispered. Her other hand was entwining with his fingers, and his side was warm with her touch. “You have people who care about you. Who will be here, if… if you want them.”

He tightened his grip on her hand, but couldn’t look. It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t do this. He shouldn’t do this. Not now. Not…

Her head pushed into his shoulder and neck, nuzzling up along his jaw until her lips caught at the point where it met his throat. He sighed despite himself, free hand coming up to rest on her shoulder. He meant to guide her away, but instead it ran down to her elbow, then back up until it could curl into her hair.

She pulled back as he shifted his head again, both of them just staring at each other to silently ask the questions that would be too awkward to vocalise. This could be weird. They weren’t made to fit together. This was the wrong time to do this. He wasn’t emotionally stable, she was confused, they were both warriors with the issues that came with that, it wrong on so many levels.

And then she pushed her way back into him, and he pulled her closer still.

 

* * *

 

It could have easily been a one-time thing, borne of emotional exhaustion and loneliness on both their parts. And for the most part, it seemed that way. They weren’t exactly jumping each other’s bones every night. Most of the time they weren’t even on the same space station.

It wasn’t like the relationship he’d had with Sasha, which had been as physical as it was emotional. With Talwyn, it was more… he wanted to say relaxed, but that wasn’t it. Because sometimes, whatever it was he had with Talwyn felt a hundred times more intense than it ever had been with Sasha. But he didn’t feel the same need to impress her. When either of them screwed up (and she did as often, if not more, than he did), they didn’t rush to apologise or anything. He didn’t need to be around her to prove they had something.

It was just… what it was. Comfortable and easy and she was his best organic friend and sometimes they had weird but wonderful sex and that was about it.

It also wasn’t like it was with Sasha because while they weren’t even the same strain of evolution, he wasn’t nearly as focussed on their differences as he had been with her. When he’d been with Sasha, he’d always been a little insecure about the fact he wasn’t a cazar. Some of it, he knew, was because he’d been young and insecure anyway, but some of it was because he never quite fit what he knew she expected.

But while Talwyn did occasionally go off on tangents that reminded him he was the last lombax in the universe (unless Angela showed up to prove him wrong one of these days), it didn’t bother him. Maybe it was because she was one of the few people in the universe that _got_ how his body worked, rather than assuming he was built like a cazar, maybe it was because they were too far removed from each other to compare, maybe it was because they were less concerned with physical affection than emotional… whatever it was, he never felt too hung up about being different from her.

He just made more of a point to take care of his fur, and she lessened up on the spices and oils that screwed with his sinuses. They adjusted.

 

* * *

 

He thought it might be weird to meet up with Sasha again, but it… weirdly wasn’t.

He came out of the showers to find her leaning against the wall, waiting, and there was a playful smile on her face as he carefully met her gaze.

“How’ve you been?” she asked. “You know, prison escape aside.”

“Oh, well, you know,” he said vaguely. “Saving galaxies, fixing up spaceships, keeping Qwark out of trouble… I get by.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “From how Talwyn talked about you, I got the impression she doesn’t know we dated.”

He smiled awkwardly, curling a hand over one ear. “Ah… yeah, well, it… um…”

“Never came up?” she asked. “It’s okay. It’s not like I bring it up to everyone I meet either.”

The awkward laugh bubbling out of his throat wasn’t exactly cool, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. Her own grin wasn’t nearly as confident as she was trying to look, and for a minute, all they could do was smile at each other, not really sure how to go from here.

Eventually, Ratchet shrugged. “You look good, Sasha.”

“So do you,” she said. “You know… as much as you can, after spending three months in a prison and what is it, ten years of saving the universe?”

“Eight, and I’m gonna take that as backwards compliment.”

“Oh, good, because that’s what I meant it as,” she said with a soft laugh. “I just meant that… I know you were having a hard time last time we talked. It’s good to see you got past it.”

He pulled his lips back in something that felt like both a smile and a grimace. “How about you? How’s the whole advisor thing going?”

“Oh, you know…” She rolled her eyes and made a vague gesture. “Dad is… always going to be how he is, and politics is never easy, but… hey. Life’s been pretty good.”

“Good. I’m glad things worked out for you.”

She nodded, then smirked and took a half step forward, “So since we’re doing such a great job skirting around the topic, I’ll be the one to bring it up. _Talwyn_ , huh?”

He laughed and ran both hands over his ears this time. “Yeah… yeah, that’s… a thing.”

“She’s hot, for a markazian.”

“Well, hey, if you want in –”

She took another step forward to whack him on the arm, just enough to hurt, just like old times. He laughed, and after a beat so did she. They soon trailed off into snickers, and he peeked up at her from under his eyebrows. “So um… we’re okay though… right?”

Sasha hesitated, then smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I mean… On the one hand, no, because dammit, Ratchet, you’re the one that got away!” she cried, her tone clear that she playing, before she sobered up again to give a nonchalant shrug. “But mostly yeah. I’m glad you’re happy. As happy as you can be, anyway.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

She just gave him a direct look, her smile more there out of fondness than anything. “You know what it means, Ratchet.”

It was part of the reason he hadn’t been able to settle down with her, after all. He smiled back a little helplessly, and that was mostly that.

It also should have been weird that Sasha and Talwyn actually became friends after the whole thing. They kept in contact, especially when he and Talwyn joined the Polaris Defence Force. He felt like he should be concerned when Talwyn occasionally got picked to escort Sasha through the galaxy, but it wasn’t too bad. Except when occasionally he’d come to pick Talwyn up after a mission and the two girls just looked at him for a second before bursting out in giggles.

“What?” he demanded, and they both adopted very innocent expressions.

“Nothing!”

“It’s not about you,” Talwyn lied. “Completely unrelated to you.”

“And your ears,” Sasha added, and Talwyn actually snorted.

He decided to ignore them both.

Girls, on the whole, were just about as much trouble as they were worth.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The 48 are a collection of unfinished and/or pointless fics saved to my hard drive, now posted on Ao3 for people's interest or in case they want to adopt them.
> 
> I'm one of the people who figure that--judging by his relative size to Alister and Angela--Ratchet must still be a kid, as lombax physiology goes. But he's also supposed to be 25 in the last few Future games, so... really slow growth? Still, he has ridiculously healthy relationships with the girls he meets. It's curious.


End file.
